


Jackie Was a Friend Of Mine

by Khashana



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst, Jack's Overdose, M/M, Panic Attack, Soulmate AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2018-05-15
Packaged: 2019-05-07 11:52:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14670525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khashana/pseuds/Khashana
Summary: Kent's staring at his forearm when the words abruptly stop as though they'd never been there.





	Jackie Was a Friend Of Mine

**Author's Note:**

> Posted for the Parse Bingo challenge for the Words On Skin Soulmate AU square. Title is a twisted version of one of the only Killers songs that doesn't remind me of Kent or Jack.

It’s taboo to read another person’s arm. Cuddles avoid placing eyes next to left forearms the same way they do hands and breasts. Jack, like many other people, covers his anyway, while Kent can’t be bothered, not until he figures out that his soulmate is probably a guy and is abruptly terrified that someone might find out. He doesn’t uncover it in public again for a long time.

He’s known his soulmate was a French-speaking hockey player for as long as he can remember. He thinks it might be someone on his Juniors team when _Rimouski Oceanic_ starts showing up a few weeks before Kent is to start there. He hopes it’s Jack when they kiss for the first time, torn between the desire to rip off his armguard and see if the thoughts are about kissing and the desire not to seem too desperate in front of his crush. He knows it’s Jack when Kent has his mouth on Jack’s dick and his eyes fixed on his own soulmark, which is saying _god he’s good at this why is he good at this has he had someone before me_ and bursts into capital letters when Jack comes.

“Nope, no one else,” he says with false flippance after they’ve both calmed down. “Just a quick study.”  
“What?” says Jack, and Kent takes his left hand in both of his own and pulls the armguard off without looking. Jack catches on and glances down at the mark, eyes going wide. He wordlessly shows it to Kent. It reads, _just a quick study,_ as Kent knew it would. 

He doesn’t uncover it in public again until the night before the draft.

Kent’s thirty minutes’ drive away from the hotel, because Montreal traffic is a nightmare this late, when Jack taps him on the shoulder at a party with a bunch of the Rimouski guys and tells him he’s going to go home and crash. Kent tells himself Jack was fine, then, for his usual definition of fine, because he doesn’t think he can live with himself if Jack was spiraling then and he didn’t notice. Kent’s thirty minutes’ drive away from the hotel when somebody spills an unknown breed of alcohol on him and he relocates to the bathroom to pull off his armguard and wash. He’s thirty minutes away when he notices the scrawling moving almost too fast to read. What if, what if, what if I, what if they don’t pick me, it says, and Kent calls Jack. 

Jack doesn’t pick up.

Kent doesn’t have a ride and his brain isn’t really working so he just sits there and stares and thinks about calling Jack again when the writing stops as though it had never been there and Kent’s blood runs cold. 

“Fuck!” he yells, and darts out of the bathroom, right into his and Jack’s other liney.

“Whoa, Parse, what’s the deal?” says Ray, hands out to steady him.

“There’s something wrong with Jack,” says Kent, voice warbling through half an octave. Ray, bless him, doesn’t question it.

“I’ll drive you back.”

They’re in the car before he realizes he should really call 911, so he does. 

“911, what is your emergency?”

Kent looks at Ray. _Fuck._ There’s nothing for it, not when Jack might already be—

“My soulmate’s words stopped,” he says, voice hollow but calm. “In the middle of a panic attack.” He can hear Ray’s intake of breath, but he focuses on the 911 lady’s voice and his own blank forearm.

“Do you know where he is?”

Kent gives her the hotel address and Ray keeps driving. She stays on the line with him until the EMTs get there. She can’t tell him if Jack’s okay, but she can tell him they’ve arrived, so he can hang up.  
They’re still four blocks away when the ambulance drives past him in the opposite direction, lights bright like heavenly revelation in the darkness. Ray pulls over for it, but once it passes, he just puts the car in park and turns around to look at Kent, face worried even in the darkness.

“It’s not--” Kent doesn’t even know what he’s saying, why he’s trying to deny it, what he could even say, but Ray just puts a hand on his shoulder.

“Soulmates are platonic sometimes,” he says. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

Maybe he’s actively trying to deny it, but Kent latches on like a lifeline to the out he’s been handed, the way out of coming out right here and right now. He nods hard, and swipes at the tears with the back of his hand, and it’s only then that he realizes he’s left his armguard in the bathroom at the party.

Ray puts the car back in drive, and silently takes Kent the rest of the way back to the hotel. It doesn’t occur to Kent to ask for a ride to the hospital instead.

The room is cold and empty and dark without Jack. As if Kent needed to be sure the ambulance was no coincidence.

Kent doesn’t sleep until the words come back. He stares at his blank arm in the moonlight for hours, eyes crossing until he has to blink hard to make his field of vision make sense again. At 4:37 AM, the day of the draft, a small _ow_ drifts across his largest vein and Kent cries until he can’t breathe.

He won’t cover his arm again, except in hockey gear, because he gets antsy if he can’t see it for too long, long after he’s stopped staring at it every spare minute to make sure Jack’s still alive. It doesn’t matter anymore, not now no one’s going to spot their own name or a teammate’s name on Kent’s wrist, not now the words will all be an addict’s anger and frustration and shame, or later new names and new rinks and _Samwell_. 

Eventually Kent makes himself stop crying. He blows his nose and power naps for two hours before buying an energy drink from the vending machine. 

And then it’s time, and Kent walks away into the rest of his life.

**Author's Note:**

> willowoak_walker asked me if I had a happy fix for this. The fix is that the bond actually is platonic, or meant to be, and both of them will grow up and find other people to love. But for now all is angst.


End file.
